Moving on the Wires: Kwaku Ananse, Burlesque and Burnt Sugar…

*Akosua Adoma Owusu is a Ghanaian filmmaker who has created such films as Drecxiya and Me Broni Ba (My White Baby). Currently, she is working on a film project with her uncle, Ko Nimo, called Kwaku Ananse – A fable, a funeral and a spider coffin. The film, drawing from Ghanaian mythology, is about a young outsider Nan Kronhwea, who is attending her estranged father’s funeral and finds out about his double life. It combines “semi-autobiographical elements with the tale of Kwaku Ananse, a trickster in West African stories who appears as both spider and man.” Owusu is raising money for the project and you can support it on her kickstarter page.

*Black Public Media is having a competition for a new interactive web series. The winner will receive a grant. The deadline for this year’s Digital Open Call will be September 18th, 2012. For more information, click here.

Kenyan filmmaker Hawa Essuman’s “supernatural screenplay titled Djin (set in a sleepy seaside town that is about to be roused by a wind that stirs people’s deepest emotions every forty years) was selected as one of the 36 projects (from 465 entries) for Rotterdam’s 29th co-production market CineMart, where it was presented to 850 potential co-financiers.” While waiting for her new film to start production, in the meantime, you can watch her 2010 film, Soul Boy, a magical film about a boy trying to save his father’s lost soul from a spiritual woman, and watch her music video for Y’akoto’s “Diamonds.”